26 Feb
2023
26 Feb
'23
7:15 p.m.
Ok, so after pouting for awhile after destroying my only Teac 1.2mb 5.25
drive (old floppies are garbage) I sat for awhile and thought about this
whole issue. The goal is simple: Install P/OS 3.2 on my Pro/380 but
doing 21 floppies for the base OS, another 20 or so for the Toolkit, and
God knows how many for the layered applications is, shall we say, for
the birds.
I feel like a spaceman trying to start a fire on the moon by banging
rocks together. There needs to be a better way.
So I looked around some more and finally found a program. Someone wrote
it, called SAMDISK. From the "World of Sam"
https://www.worldofsam.org/products/samdisk-utility
Downloaded it to Windows10, fired it up (CMD mode only, thank God) and
typed:
samdisk 177-21.td0 disk0021.dsk
And sure enough a 430,336 byte image popped up in my directory. Moved it
to a USB, put it in my Gotek/Flashfloppy, fired up my pdp11/73 running
RSX111M+, and did a mount DU1: /over
It mounted. $ mount du1: /over
$ dir du1:[*,*]
Directory DU1:[ZZSYS]
26-FEB-2023 22:09
POSRES.TSK;1 42. C 23-JUN-1987 14:51
POS.SYS;1 441. C 23-JUN-1987 14:51
STARTUP.TSK;1 19. C 23-JUN-1987 14:52
SASCOM.TSK;1 4. C 23-JUN-1987 14:52
SAS.COM;1 1. 23-JUN-1987 14:52
SIR.TSK;1 74. C 23-JUN-1987 14:52
Total of 581./581. blocks in 6. files
Directory DU1:[1,54]
26-FEB-2023 22:09
SIR.MSG;1 17. 23-JUN-1987 14:52
SIR.MNU;1 5. 23-JUN-1987 14:52
SIR.HLP;1 10. 23-JUN-1987 14:52
SCRIPT.COM;1 23. 23-JUN-1987 14:52
Total of 55./55. blocks in 4. files
Grand total of 636./636. blocks in 10. files in 2. directories
That is the first disk in the POS series. So we know that this tool can
work to turn thse stupid TD0 files into images that we can use.
Now to convert the rest of the files, and get a second Gotek. Because I
am going to need to run two of them to emulate the two RX50's on a
Pro/380. If I set one as drive 0, the second as drive 1, and use a
straight 34 pin ribbon cable it might work.....
Never dull. But this is a far less painful solution than screwing around
with 100 floppy disks.
CZ